A game designer & illustrator tries to return his sense of wonder to its original packaging.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Year-End Wrap-Up 2014

This was the most productive year ever for Blue Boxer Rebellion. Here's a quick recap, which is really just an excuse to thank you all for the fantastic response to my work and a special welcome to everyone who joined the blog this year.

June: Big Hexyland ate up much of my creative energy for the first half of the year. Nine modular megahexes created as vector files in Illustrator that you can arrange in a zillion combinations or drop one by one into an existing campaign. Each map was released with a node crawl map with capsule descriptions of each area. The fact that it's the default setting for Dungeonteller isn't bad, either. I am working on the sequel and actually previewed the first hex back in September.

September: I had a lot of pent up desire to grab a pencil and draw after spending so much time with Illustrator and InDesign doing vector and layout work, so I blazed through the task of creating the Ultimate Hand-drawn Isometric Battle Maps PDF in about a month. Like my previous iso battle maps, they are an entirely new way of making your dungeons come alive for your players as handouts AND as battle maps you can use with 25mm minis or with the tailor-made Dungeonteller monster counters.

October: I delivered three commissioned battle maps to the Winter Eternal Indiegogo campaign, entirely compatible with the Ultimate Iso Battle Maps. I loved making these atmospheric vignettes of a magic-punk fantasy world locked in an everlasting cold snap. I also introduced a 7th hero class to the Dungeonteller canon: the witch, available as a free PDF.

Since then, I have been working on a huge Dungeonteller module with a town map and eight dungeon levels. Half-jokingly I've been referring to it as either "In Search of the Unpwned" or "Entry Level" but should probably come up with a more serious name. I wanted to have it done by January 1, and damn I'm close, but might not make it for a week or so.